Fragments
poem after Phap Hoan
Fragments // after Phap Hoan
by claudia jean
You taste like moss and widow bites.
Sinking into flesh,
teeth hug
with the same force
as God pushing me
out of heaven.
I can almost forget
I'm being held down.
Good girl grounded,
ignoring the skies.
Dodging my halo
by passing the time.
Holding hands
around a loaded gun,
barrel buckled to the back
of my throat.
Do you still
think I look pretty
with something in my mouth?
This weekend was another round of Gather
We looked at the poem Fragments by Phap Hoan to analyze the art of the fragmented poem. In their heart, all my poetry is fragments, floating in the ether until I pull them together.
This isn’t the poem I wrote during Sunday’s write-in. I didn’t find my lines agreeable, so they’re still being workshopped (although some of them do slap). But I did ramble together the poem above.
I also didn’t add prompts to this again because our Claudia has been exhausted, which means she isn’t fronting as much. We find it more difficult to string things together when that happens, so the fragmented poem works well in these cases.
Thank you for reading!
If you liked this poem, here’s more!
At that point. The only thing that would matter is doing anything to keep you alive.